Tex Texin wrote:
> Ogi,
> I think the short answer is no. "Direction" has a number of components
> to it.
> Instead of thinking of an instance of a single text string, consider a
> series of text runs, with direction changes.
I admit that I'm haven't read much about bidi. I just try to talk with
common sense.
> When the language changes, does the direction level increase, is it
> reduced, or is it a start of a new top-level direction setting? How does
> each run relate to the surrounding runs? (In terms of the bidi
> algorithm.)
XML elements already imply nesting of text runs. Isn't that enough?
> Also, what is the layout direction, regardless of the language of each
> text run?
> For example, as you know in HTML, tables have a direction. Regardless of
> the language of each cell's contents, the placement of the cell (or
> column actually) is determined by the direction of the table.
<table> can use xml:lang too.
> Direction for a language can also be ambiguous. Chinese can be written
> lr-tb, rl-tb, tb-rl...
> (where l,r,t,b are left, right, top, bottom). The front page of some
> Chinese newspapers can use all 3 of those directions/layouts.
When stylesheet is not used, you already give up on controlling layout
and you choose to use some default layout for elements. So isn't enough
if one of these directions (lr-tb, ...) is chosen as default for
language? I don't know if this is acceptable for Chinese.
> So xml:lang might be suggestive, but it is not explicit or informative
> enough to base bidi layout upon it alone.
My point is: isn't xml:lang enough for producing acceptable layout when
there is no stylesheet?
Regards,
ogi